


quicquid est id quod otiosus

by adspexi



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Gen, Misuse Of My Classics Minor, Unusual Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22221892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adspexi/pseuds/adspexi
Summary: "The sweet young maidens of Achaea haven’t asked me about goatherds or gardeners in years. The sweet young maidens of Achaea are terrified that they might catch your eye and end up turned into pheasants! The sweet young maidens of Achaea aretired!”Mount Olympus has finally tired of Zeus' womanizing (and man-izing, and I-was-POSITIVE-that-dove-was-a-transformed-maiden-I-swear-izing). Something must be done.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19
Collections: Exchanges After Dark Birthday Bash 2020





	quicquid est id quod otiosus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/gifts).



It was really quite inconvenient for Zeus to have to go and rescue another transfigured hookup, but then again, he’d done worse in his day. The youth had at least been transformed into a gazelle, which, though they ran fast, were fairly easy to spot and to catch. One week when Hera had felt particularly spiteful, she’d turned a lyrist into a cricket; he’d spent three nights running around with a net before he found her.

That is, he’d spent three nights ordering Hermes to do it, but walking through the same forest fifty times was still travelling, right? It was practically the boy’s divine duty.

This gazelle wouldn’t need that much care. It was barely even running; more’s the pity, he liked a little chase first. It had spotted him and trotted leisurely in a straight line to a lovely, scenic grove with a convenient bed of flowers for thanks-for-turning-me-human-again-My-Lord sex.

Zeus approached the gazelle on foot for the last few yards. Call him a traditionalist, but there was nothing like physically _being there_ to watch a conquest blink his long lashes, look up at you with dark, liquid eyes…

…which currently had horizontal pupils, and Zeus had never been into that. He always made sure to do satyrs from the back ever since he’d looked one in the face and nearly lost his boner. Anyway.

The gazelle backed up, just a little. Just enough to be the human response and not animal instinct, to be appropriately awed and yielding. This was going to be so easy.

Too easy.

As he took the last step forward, his hand already reaching out to caress a delicate ear, a string caught on his feet. Three things happened in quick succession, too fast to pick apart until he’d already been humiliated:

  * He tripped face-first right into those lovely flowers,
  * A golden net sprang up from beneath them, encasing him and suspending him from a tree, and
  * The gazelle melted away to reveal a glaring Apollo, who said, “Father, this is an intervention.”



* * *

“Look,” Zeus said, “let’s be reasonable here.”

The assembled gods of Olympus scowled, as if they had formed into one nightmarish entity whose sole purpose was to make him face a consequence.

“We have been eminently reasonable,” said Athena, her face as wooden as the statue she’d once carved to honor a dead girlfriend. A girlfriend she’d murdered herself. Right. She probably wasn’t the one to look to for sympathy.

“Aphrodite, you know how humiliating it is to experience this kind of attack.”

Aphrodite’s peerlessly lovely fists were white at the knuckles. “You want to know what else I know, Zeus?” she hissed. “I know the mortals’ struggles with love. I know their concerns, their dreams, the poor luck they pray they may never encounter. Your wandering dick is the single most popular prayer I’ve gotten for the past three decades.”

“I mean, I’m flattered, but—”

“To _avoid,_ dipshit. The sweet young maidens of Achaea haven’t asked me about goatherds or gardeners in years. The sweet young maidens of Achaea are too preoccupied with terror that they might catch your eye and end up turned into pheasants, or murdered by their fiances, or bearing an eldritch monstrosity they have to throw off a cliff and get murdered by when it grows up! The sweet young maidens of Achaea are _tired!”_

Well, Zeus thought, there’s an obvious solution to that problem. “Then can’t I just—”

Dionysus stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Father, the sweet young gentlemen of Achaea are tired as well.”

“And the assorted creatures you’ve mistaken for suitors,” said Artemis. “You don’t even check half the time. That Thebean princess is still wandering the forests and that she-bear may never recover emotionally.”

“Ah,” said Zeus, his voice suffused with all the fatherly dignity he’d learned to crib from actual fathers. “I see. I am to be your Kinesias, cruelly denied, held at ransom to the whims of my unfilial brood.”

Hephaestus smiled at that, looking up from the knife he’d been polishing. The very, very large knife. “Filial duty. What an interesting concept.” He angled the blade to catch the light. “Do remind me of how you showed it to our grandfather.”

“I— ah. I find myself, upon further reflection, amenable, to the discussion of your terms.”

**Author's Note:**

> I actually did research for a Write Bad Fic On Purpose exchange but in the spirit of the exchange I'm not saying jack about it, if you're like "gee was that really a thing that happened" it probably was. The title is from the Priapeia, a poem about honoring the god of BDE by being Horny On Main in your writing. As the kids say: big mood.


End file.
